2013 Thunderhill 25 Hours thread
 

NASA 25 Hours of Thunderhill
NASA 25 Hours of Thunderhill 2013 - Live Timing

Race Monitor is best smartphone app

I'm not there this year but Team 949 Racing is. Gordon Jennings the car owner and team manager for this T25.
Drivers:
Gordon Jennings
Sonny Watanasirisuk
Mark Drennan
Justin Neel

Go get 'em boys!

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1386370735
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1386370735



Live video feed from the Mazda USA team

Friday practice. One bent $500K GMG Audi R8LM

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1386370888

Looks like you´re racing some local friends of mine in the #36 car. Good luck :)

Looks like Sonny put it on pole. Nicely done sir.

whoa thanks for sharing the mazda livestream, I am definitely going to what that on and off after chumpcar.

In two laps only!!!!!

The audio quality for endurance-radio this year is pretty bad. Hopefully they will fix it.

Congrats to Sonny!

Was the R8 a "cold tires are cold" problem or did someone help him off?

Taken about 20 minutes before the start today

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1386442814

From NASA's facebook page:
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1386444823

HD streaming in car

Pure Performance 25 Hours of Thunderhill on Livestream

Live race calling
http://new.livestream.com/endurance-...hour&cat=event

the mazda USA youtube for their 6 diesels is mostly 949 talk :)

Bombing it:giggle:

Mark got in about an hour ago in P3. Promptly set fast lap at a 2:03.545, possibly lap record. He's backed off to 2:06's and still managed to pass the leader. No other E3 car in this stint is even close to his lap times so he's opening up a gap while in cruise mode. I can step away from the computer and go get some work done now..

Kitty leading both E3 and E2 by the same margin.

P9 overall now. Kitty (E3) would be P2 in E1 and E0. Ahead of every factory team, including Mazda.

SCCA would give you a 200# trophy for that win margin.

Last lap was 29:45 and now 5 laps down in E3. I assume had to do some repairs in the pits?

edit: Last lap was a 2:06 now, 3 seconds quicker than E3 leader. Putting in some work. :party:

That would be ~8 minutes to make up in 2.5 hours?

uhg! I wonder what happened?

From facebook:
Emilio - Rear hub flange failure I think, wheel came off with it. Towed Sonny in.
3 minutes ago · Like

I don't have precise info but it sounds like a rear hub flange let go. Hub flang and the important round thing attached to departed the racing effort for greener pastures. Sonny driving at the time. Towed in, repaired in one 29 minute lap.
e don't change rear hubs in races. It's faster to swap in a whole new upright/axle/hub assembly. Guessing it took Andrew about 10-15 minutes to do that.

So now we're 5 laps down with 2.5hrs to go. The long hours of pedaling around doing 2:08's is over. Time to unleash whatever speed Kitty still has. Currently averaging about 5s faster than RJ. Won't be quite enough. We need them to make two more stops to our one. The good thing is RJ has to push now that we're closing rapidly. If they're smart, they'll calculate maximum gain possible by us and pace to stay just ahead so they can avoid as much risk as possible. That's what we would do.

As it is, it's just like last year. I had a lead in E1, broke in the morning and had to drive flatout for the last 4 hours to overtake leader just at the end of the race.

949 just pitted and RJ did about 15 mins ago. I assume both are good to go to the end? Looks like down 3 laps and some change with 1 hour and 40 minutes left.

Who's in the car until the end?

RJ almost certainly will need another stop with about an hour to go, based on their previous stint lengths. Our stop was almost a minute faster than theirs. I don't think we're topped off so we'll probably need another stop too unfortunately. We still need a FCY to help us close the gap.

well whoever it is is flyin... only .7 off fastest lap of the race for that car. The previous few laps have all been under 2.04.5 which is about 6 seconds faster per lap than rj. Shaping up to be a really interesting battle.

Sonny in Kitty now. With front end aero damaged, pushing flatout. He'll likely stay in the car until the end.

Yeah, I was looking at the numbers and it looked like you needed ~8.7 seconds a lap from the 90 minute mark to catch them on pace alone. Probably need a little help but still got time and anything can happen.

And now I glance at the live timing and see the last lap was -8.9 :party:

Sonny is just doing work. 2:03.5 now... wow. .2 off the fastest lap with a tired car and busted aero.

Update. Mark is actually in the car now. Must have switched at the last fuel stop.

seriously down to the wire here

Yeah. It is a LOT closer than I thought would be possible. I am guessing neither team has a pit stop left. RJ racing doesn't seem to be speeding up...

Edit:
Nevermind, i thougth there were a few more minutes left.

We finished 2nd in E3, 58 seconds behind RJ Racing #23 Miata. The failed hub flange at around 4.5 hours to go put us from a 6 lap lead to 5 lap deficit. We clawed almost all of it back with sheer speed. Congratulations to Team 949 Racing for a huge effort. Next year!

So who got disqualified in E3 bumping the #36 car to second place?

We got DQed. The front aero got destroyed when the rear hub failed and the car went off at very high speed. The airdam, undertray, and brake ducts were removed while we were replacing the hub, and stock bumper skin was ziptied/taped back on. Without front aero, we came in 2lb underweight and were DQed.

That freakin sucks, sorry guys. Not a good year for the Cali NASA crew.

Is NASA just out to get you guys? You can't catch a break this year.

Norcal NASA region keeps track of lap records. It is customary for NASA to weigh/dyno any car that set a new lap record (we did) even if it does not win it's class. Perhaps there is more to it than that but I wasn't there so I don't know. I do know that traditionally at least, NASA does not dyno anything after the T25. They expect competitors with a concern to lodge formal protests well before the race starts. Jerry doesn't like to have drama after the 25 and he basically says so in the drivers meeting.

We went fast during the race. 2:03.2 at Thunderhill is smoking fast. To do it in a car that's optimized for endurance pace and not sprint pace is even more astounding. To put that laptime into perspective, Rover in full Nationals trim (PTE*, no aero, 2-liter with ~2800rpm of flat powerband) was able to get to a 2:03.7. Kitty is set up completely differently to improve mileage and driveability at the expense of speed.

I was a little surprised that we were dynoed after the event, but not shocked. Our fast lap was close to 2 seconds faster than our closest competitor, 5+ seconds a lap faster than the fast laps most cars were able to turn, and our race pace was consistently 4-7 seconds a lap faster, even when we were in cruise mode during the night.

The weight thing is a real bummer, but sometimes you play too close to the sun in an effort to shine bright. The rear hub failure was another surprise - we dealt with it remarkably quickly but there just wasn't enough time to recover. If there were guaranteed wins, they wouldn't be nearly as sweet. This team's preparation and workmanship before/during the race was every bit on par with the pro teams in attendance (GMG, Award, Truspeed, etc). Up until hour 19, the most exciting things to happen during the race were a flatspotted tire at 90 minutes in and pulling the car 45 minutes earlier than expected to swap brake pads around 1am - every other stop was on schedule and flawlessly executed. Even the RF hub failure early in the morning was reported early by Sonny and changed quickly with virtually no drama.

There's no doubt that E3 is the hardest class to win. It's probably the most difficult amateur class win on the planet. You have to be perfect, and we were almost perfect, which isn't enough. I certainly hope we take another crack at it next year as a team. I can't imagine crewing for another Miata team - the 949 guys set the bar pretty damn high.

Well at least they didn't make you pull the cams again after lol

Such a great effort by the 949 guys. It was a very well oiled machine. The whole event seemed drama free up until the end. It's a heart breaker to have things work out the way they did in the end.

^ thats part of what makes long races like this so exciting (anything can happen!)

Well stated Andrew, and a huge congratulations for the quality and quantity of the work you guys all put in, regardless of the end results on paper. In this case, rules are rules, as rough as it is, and like you said; if wins were guaranteed it wouldn't make them so sweet. It's these times that make the wins so meaningful. There will be many more.

-Ryan

Quite disappointed I was unable to participate this year, 2012 T25 was one of the most challenging/entertaining efforts I've been a part of in quite some time. Also its an absolute bummer that Kitty got the DQ but like you say, sometimes that just how things work out. That car CAN and WILL win E3 once it gets a break. I hope Gordon and 949R decide to make another go of it in 2014 and I manage to stay on the mailing list ;)

Congrats to all for the spectacular effort!

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1386651750

Same I am down for a 2014 T25. I still had classes and too much work in the lab to do the week of T25 this year. 2014 will be year 9 of my college where I finally no longer have actual classes... Just 4 more years of research to complete my degree :crx:

Chris, I think I have pics of you doing homework or grading papers or something in the pits from last year ;)

My profile pic on Facebook is still that lol. Couldn't go this year. I assumed the first batch of superconducting nano devices would be ready in the lab and was correctish. Was in the lab watching feed from the race though.

Note the rotor broken off and hanging on the caliper. That we came back from this to within 50s of the E3 win, is astounding.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1386868051

The recently departed
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1386868051

I will probably be giving you a call later today. I may want that tire and rim to make a lamp out of.

Not for sale, sorry

I thought you weren't supposed to media blast 6ULs to put a new finish on it?

Argh! Lost a wheel...

http://www.speedhunters.com/wp-conte...=1387824342230

Oh, there it is!

http://www.speedhunters.com/wp-conte...=1387824342229

Sheared the flange off the RR hub. Still attached to the wheel. One of the reasons we like ARP studs.

20 minutes to get towed in. Our head T25 mechanic Andrew Kidd (Trackspeed Engineering) swapped the RR upright/axle/hub and R&R'd brakes in about 10 minutes. Badass.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1387825813